Avalara has published research suggesting UK finance leaders are under pressure to deploy AI agents faster than governance processes can keep pace. The findings are based on a survey of 505 UK chief financial officers and senior finance leaders.

More than nine in 10 respondents said they faced moderate or significant career pressure to show a return on investment from AI agent spending, with half describing that pressure as significant. At the same time, 54% said their AI agent initiatives had delivered only limited measurable return so far, while 74% said deployment pressure was focused mainly on speed.

The figures point to a gap between executive expectations and the controls needed for AI use in finance, where decisions can affect reporting, tax, compliance and audit processes. The report focuses on agentic AI, a category of systems designed to take actions or make recommendations within business workflows.

Governance weaknesses appeared across several measures in the UK sample. Among respondents, 77% lacked dedicated in-house finance expertise able to understand how their AI agents work, leaving many teams reliant on suppliers and IT departments.

Almost half, 47%, said they were only somewhat confident they could explain an AI agent’s actions to an auditor or regulator. Another 21% said accountability for a significant AI agent error in finance would either be unclear or rest with no one, while 48% said AI incident response plans were either untested or still being developed.

Control gaps

The survey suggests the issue is not resistance to AI adoption but uncertainty over how to supervise it once embedded in finance operations. Respondents said the most useful steps for raising confidence in wider deployment centred on trust, data quality and traceability.

Measures cited included AI agents operating within existing systems of record, outputs grounded in verified tax, compliance and financial data, validation against known compliance requirements, supplier commitments on accuracy and accountability, and audit trails documenting each AI action.

The two most valued functions were audit-ready documentation for every AI-driven action and monitoring regulatory changes with updates applied in real time. Those preferences suggest finance teams want tools that can withstand scrutiny rather than systems that simply move faster.

Avalara commissioned the study across four markets, surveying more than 1,500 chief financial officers and senior finance leaders in the UK, US, India and Australia. All respondents had deployed, piloted or actively evaluated AI agents in financial processes over the previous year and worked at companies with revenue above USD $10 million.

The international findings closely tracked the UK numbers. Across all markets, 92% said they felt moderate or significant career pressure to demonstrate AI return on investment, while half said their AI agent programmes had produced only limited measurable return to date.

Only 7% said their organisation prioritised governance over speed, and 30% said internal controls had not been updated within the past year to reflect AI agents taking or recommending actions. Another 44% said they were only somewhat confident they could explain an AI agent’s actions to an auditor or regulator.

Executive pressure

The research places finance leaders in the middle of a broader shift in corporate AI strategy. Many businesses now want AI systems to move beyond drafting text or analysing data into areas where they can initiate or recommend operational decisions.

That creates particular tension in finance because errors can be visible, difficult to reverse and subject to regulatory scrutiny. Tax calculations, reporting decisions and compliance steps often require a documented chain of accountability, something many organisations still appear to be building.

Hugo Sarrazin, Chief Executive Officer at Avalara, said the risk comes when adoption outpaces oversight.

“Finance leaders are right to move quickly to capitalize on agentic AI opportunities, but speed without accountability creates new forms of risk, and speed without rethinking workflows limits ROI. The organizations that realize the greatest value from AI won’t simply deploy more agents. They’ll leverage agents with trusted data, governed workflows, and clear controls that enable automation with confidence,” said Sarrazin.

External industry figures cited in the report made a similar point about the need for broader expertise. The challenge, they argued, is not only technical implementation but understanding what AI agents can access, what they can change and when human approval is needed.

“Finance leaders are being asked to move quickly with AI, but governing agents requires a new combination of domain, AI, IT, and data governance expertise. As AI agents gain access to financial and compliance workflows, organizations need to know what those agents can see, what they can do, and when human approval is required. That kind of control has to be built into the architecture, not added after the fact,” said Frank Cirone, VP Commercial Strategy at Snowflake, a cloud data platform company.

Jim Lundy, Founder, CEO and Lead Analyst at Aragon Research, framed the issue as one of explainability as much as automation.

“AI agents are now moving into business processes that require trust, transparency, and governance by design. As enterprises scale agentic AI, the question becomes less about whether the technology can act and more about whether organizations can understand, control, and explain those actions. In finance, where workflows are auditable and outcomes carry real business consequences, governance and explainability will become essential requirements for adoption,” said Lundy.

Millions of Santander customers will no longer receive an annual breakdown of the banking fees they’ve paid after the high street giant confirmed it is scrapping the long-running paper statement.

From August, the bank will stop sending out its yearly Statement of Fees, which gives customers a summary of charges paid over the previous 12 months.

Instead, customers wanting to check how much they’ve paid in fees will have to log into Santander’s online or mobile banking services.

The annual statement currently provides a single breakdown of charges, such as overdraft interest or fees for using a debit card abroad, as reported by creatorzine.com.

Santander said customers will still be able to access the same information digitally “anytime, wherever you are”, but it will no longer arrive automatically through the post.

The move is part of the bank’s continued push towards digital banking and paper-free services.

Santander said customers can continue to view account charges through its online and mobile banking platforms, while fee information for individual accounts will also remain available through each account’s Fee Information Document.

The bank says 9.2 million customers have already switched to paper-free banking.

On its website, Santander says: “Going paper-free means that you’ll get your statements and other important notices online and not by post.

“We have 9.2 million Santander customers who are paper-free and are seeing the benefits.”

Customers who choose paper-free banking receive an email whenever a new statement or document is available to view.

Documents remain accessible online for up to seven years, and can be downloaded or printed if required.

The change comes as banks continue shifting more everyday services online, with customers increasingly encouraged to manage their accounts through banking apps rather than paper correspondence.

Anyone wanting to keep track of their annual banking costs will now need to check their fees through Santander’s online or mobile banking instead of waiting for a yearly paper statement to arrive.

SOFIAH NICHOLE SALIVIO

News Editor

Propolis has published research showing that 75% of UK CEOs and senior business leaders do not believe B2B marketing drives business growth. The findings are based on a survey of 150 UK business leaders.

The study points to a gap between how senior executives view marketing’s role and the contribution marketers say they make to long-term commercial performance. While many leaders accept that marketing matters within their organisations, most stop short of treating it as a primary source of growth.

According to the research, 84% of respondents see marketing as a support function rather than a commercial growth driver. A further 77% said sales is a bigger driver of growth than marketing, while 67% believe marketing is less accountable for business results than sales.

Those views appear to shape boardroom decisions. More than a third of respondents, 35%, said marketers are being held back at board level as investment is increasingly directed towards innovation and AI.

Boardroom gap

The report describes this disconnect as a “CEO blind spot”, arguing that companies often credit growth only when revenue is recorded, while overlooking the earlier work that supports demand creation and brand development. It suggests a structural issue in how commercial impact is measured, particularly in business-to-business markets where buying cycles can be long.

In that environment, marketing activity may influence a sale long before a contract is signed or income appears in company accounts. By contrast, sales teams are more directly linked to transactions, making their contribution easier for boards to track and compare.

The findings add to a wider debate over how companies assess the return on marketing spending at a time when budgets are under pressure from new technology investment. In many organisations, spending on AI and innovation has become more prominent in strategic planning, leaving other functions under greater scrutiny.

Richard O’Connor, Chief Executive Officer at Propolis, said: “Too many CEOs say they value B2B marketing, but our research suggests they still don’t see it as a commercial growth function. If you believe marketing matters but doesn’t drive growth, it’s difficult to argue that you recognise its full contribution to the business.

“The challenge is that much of marketing’s commercial contribution happens long before revenue appears on a dashboard, making it far less visible than that of functions operating closer to the point of sale. As CEOs face growing pressure to deliver short-term results while increasing investment in AI, there is a real risk that a critical engine of sustainable growth becomes an easy target for budget cuts unless this blind spot is addressed.”

The survey focused on UK CEOs and senior leaders at B2B organisations. The results suggest the issue is not whether marketing is seen as relevant, but whether it is regarded as central to commercial outcomes in the same way as sales or product investment.

Measurement issue

The report’s central argument is that marketing’s effect is often indirect and delayed, which can make it harder to defend in board discussions shaped by near-term financial targets. Where leadership teams favour metrics closely tied to immediate revenue, longer-term work such as brand building and early-stage demand generation may carry less weight.

That can affect not only budgets but also influence at senior level. If marketing is viewed mainly as a support function, marketers may find it harder to shape strategy despite being responsible for market positioning, customer insight and pipeline development.

The research highlights a persistent tension in B2B companies between activities that can be measured quickly and those that may take months to translate into sales. For boards under pressure to show results, that distinction can have direct consequences for resource allocation.